Key player in red tide cleanup receives inaugural Manatee County tourism award
Carmine DeMilio, Manatee County’s park operations manager, might not be the first name that comes to mind as a candidate for a tourism award.
Yet, his key role in managing the cleanup of Manatee County beaches and waterways from dead sea life washed ashore by red tide earned him the gratitude Monday of the Manatee County Tourist Development Council.
Elliott Falcione, executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, presented DeMilio with the first-ever Outstanding Contribution to Tourism Award.
“If it wasn’t for their hard work, tourism would have dropped off in this last red tide episode,” Falcione said, as he presented the award, featuring Manatee County’s namesake marine mammal, the manatee, to DeMilio.
In 2018, during a more severe and sustained red tide bloom, county workers removed 450,000 pounds of dead and rotting sea life, as the algal bloom played havoc with Manatee County’s tourism industry.
This year, the county was more proactive in anticipating what needed to be done and responded faster to the red tide invasion.
“We staged and pre-positioned assets before the red tide came ashore. We were proactive in working with the Department of Environmental Protection and Mote Marine Laboratory, and that allowed us to have staff on site,” DeMilio said after receiving his award.
While red tide continues to be a threat, winds have tended to blow it out into the Gulf of Mexico, rather than onto the beaches of Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key, and the amount of dead sea life hauled to the county landfill is less than half — 200,000 pounds this year — compared with 2018.
The discharge of more than 200 million nitrogen-rich gallons of water from the Piney Point gypsum stack into Tampa Bay is suspected of stimulating this year’s red tide bloom.
State leaders approved an emergency discharge from Piney Point in April to lower the pool before it burst open, potentially sending a 20-foot surge of water into the surrounding area.
The order was given after a leak was detected in a pond that held 480 million gallons of polluted water.
Manatee County has since been trucking water from Piney Point 30 miles away to keep the gypsum stack from dangerously filling to the brim again.
Environmental groups oppose a plan to use deepwell injection as a disposal method for the Piney Point wastewater.
This story was originally published October 18, 2021 at 1:37 PM.
